


The River

by treefrogie84



Series: Coldest Hits That Weren't [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s12e09 First Blood, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Post-Episode: s12e03 The Foundry, grieving Mary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 23:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13351323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: She heads west first, pops up to I-80 and justgoes.





	The River

**Author's Note:**

> [Foop](http://formidablepassion.tumblr.com) read over this for me to make sure it was worth finishing. Any errors or weirdness is my fault, not hers.
> 
> Inspired by Heart's [The River](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH-djUNlArM)

She heads west first, pops up to I-80 and just _goes_. She has no idea how to even begin to come to terms with everything.

Her little boys…

She shies away from the thought, tightens her grip on the wheel, and focuses on the road ahead of her. She can’t do anything about the past thirty years, can barely keep putting one foot in front of the other, logging mile after mile in her borrowed car.

She stops for the night just over the Wyoming state border, a no tell motel and diner immediately off the interstate. The mayor is having dinner in the corner along with an impromptu city council meeting. Small town living.

 

* * *

 

Thankfully, Dean had thought to put together some identification for her and a credit card. Reno is unrecognizable when she passes through, the small motel she and John had stayed at when they got married gone, a car park in its place. She spends the night in one of the tourist bars, watching how some things, at least, haven’t changed.

For some reason, California doesn’t bother her with how much it’s changed. Maybe because it was always fantastical, hope and a new chance. Dad never… Dad had never had much use for ‘those hippies,’ and would gleefully let any other hunter take care of it.

It’s as good of place as any to get her bearings. She spends a few weeks camping out of her car on the beach, picking up shifts at the diner during the day, relearning her old pool tricks in the evenings.

John’s journal sits like a leather bound lump of lead in the bottom of her bag. She’s read some of it, but his pain haunts her, screaming from the pages. Her own heart screams back, burnt black, the char threatening to collapse under its own weight.

_I went to Missouri, and I learned the truth._

It’s dated less than two weeks after her death.

 

* * *

 

Work dries up and she goes back on the road, slightly more secure.

She starts following John’s journal, place to place, catching bare glimpses of Sam, of Dean. Dean, at seven, learning to shoot because John’d had a rough hunt. He’d left the boys behind, of course he did. Dean has a killer instinct though, not like Sammy.

He doesn’t mention who was watching the boys while he was out hunting. The boys mentioned Bobby, but he doesn’t appear until Sam’s almost school age.

Maybe she should stop following John and start following herself.

 

* * *

 

All her cousins are dead, or near enough. Her contacts, not that she ever had many, are the same. Even the family doctor. Everyone she thought she could count on.

She sees the boys for the first time in two months at Asa’s wake. She never wanted him to become a hunter, never wanted them to be, never wanted this for anyone. Let other people deal with the monsters in the woods, she just wanted her family to be safe.

Dean can’t even be in the same room as her, going to someone else for comfort. Sam… her baby is trying, so hard, but everything he says just feeds oxygen to the flame. He’d told her, told her that her being there was the best way to fill in the gaps, but what he didn’t, couldn’t, tell her is how to forgive herself.

The gaps are her fault, how can she face him knowing that?

 

* * *

 

Mom and Dad’s house is still standing, engulfed by town. She looked up the couple she’d sold it to, they’d spent fifteen years in that house, raised a couple of kids, before moving on.

Her house, the house she’d planned to raise her boys in, is still standing too. Looking at it from across the street, she’d never be able to tell there was a fire. The current owners have painted it a nice green from her white and blue. She misses it. The young man who lives there watches her car suspiciously while mowing.

She passes her sixty-second (or is it her thirtieth?) birthday sitting in the same diner she and John had their first date. The benches have been repadded, the menus revamped, calorie counts listed next to the prices, and she can’t smoke. But it’s the closest thing to home she’s seen.

In this entire world, sitting here nursing a cup of coffee, wishing she knew how to reach out to her boys, wishing she could be who they want her to be, is the closest thing she’s been to home.

There was frost outside this morning when she’d climbed into her car, racing across Kansas, a cold front on her tail. She’d thought about calling the boys, reminding them to pack warm clothes, to make sure the Impala has at least a quarter tank of gas at all times.

But they know that already, don’t need her to remind them. They’re grown men who’ve been on their own for years, decades.

The waitress comes by to warm up her coffee, gently asks if she’s ok, if she’s got someplace to go. She must look like she’s worse off than she is then. Nodding, she pulls out her phone again, hovering over the call button before setting it back down, goes back to stirring her coffee.

Maybe it would better to just show back up at the bunker. Dean won’t turn her away and Sam… She bites her lip.

Hopefully, Sam will find in his heart to forgive her someday.

The phone rings, startling her out of her head. “Castiel?”

**Author's Note:**

> This started life as a prompt fill for [December Coldest Hits](http://spncoldesthits.tumblr.com). Unfortunately, it wasn't working and was fighting me, so it got put aside until I wasn't working on a deadline. Which was yesterday.


End file.
